They confirm Nielsen's finding to use a list of numbers when people are asked how much they agree with a statement and use radio buttons rather than drop-down menus — but he disagrees with their finding to "present one question at a time across multiple screens".

Nielsen reminds that asking 23 questions (the study length) is too many for commercial use.

MAXIMIZE the response rate by MINIMIZING the burden you impose on customers.

His finding is that most users want all the questions on a single screen.

Since practical Web surveys rely on *voluntary* compliance, it's important to make them as pleasant as possible and to follow users' preferences. (This is in contrast to the research study, where participants were *required* to complete the survey.)

The biggest usability problem in questionnaires on real websites is that they are inevitably TOO LONG. This again leads to low response rates, which invalidates the entire exercise. See:> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040202.html

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Apparently MS Maps, Microsoft Live Search, new 3D online maps of six World Cities includes ... Northampton. You read right. Good on them.

The other lucky MS launchees apart from New York ("Imagine you are there" "As seen in Spiderman") are Austin, Texas, Cape Coral, Florida, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ottawa. I would bring you screenshots but it's crashed.